The Marion County Cattlemen’s Association rodeo will again bring family friendly fun to the Columbia Expo Center, and two inductions will also be made into the Mississippi Rodeo Hall of Fame.
The 64th annual eight-event, Professional Cowboy Association rodeo is coming up Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Inductions will be made Saturday into the Mississippi Rodeo Hall of Fame, which is based in Columbia. Ken Knopp, who coordinates the Hall of Fame, said the inductees will be the late Ronald “Buddy” Lytle of Byhalia, a renowned rodeo judge, and Bob Lummus of West Point, who competed at the tops of the national ranks in steer wrestling.
Kim Gingell, marketing manager for the rodeo, said in addition to the popular rodeo events like barrel racing and bull riding, some fun activities that are returning include the Ghost Riders, where monkeys ride on dogs; the Little Buckers, where future cowboys ride miniature ponies; the calf scramble and the wild cow milking contest.
“We’re looking for this to be one of our biggest rodeos,” Gingell said.
Tickets are $10 in advance at Town and Country Feed or $12 at the door. Children are $6, and youth 6 and under are free. Proceeds help with a senior scholarship the Cattlemen’s Association awards.
Trent Tolar is president of the association this year.
The Hall of Fame induction will recognize two Mississippi residents who made an impact on the national rodeo scene.
Lytle wrote the Rodeo Judges Handbook and was instrumental in putting in place a professional judging school that helped direct the sport away from a spotty history of inconsistent judging and favoritism to a standardized structure, Knopp said.
Over the course of his long career, he judged 24 NFR Rodeos and all of professional rodeo’s biggest events, including Cheyenne, Pendleton, Houston, Fort Worth and more.
The Oklahoma native in 1978 met his future wife, the former Sue McKiever Lytle at the Cheyenne, Wyo., rodeo, and they settled in her hometown in Byhalia. He lived there for 23 years until his death from leukemia in 2002. In 2008 the PRCA recognized Lytle’s lifetime of achievement by inducting him into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame.
Bob Lummus of West Point is one of the few Mississippians to ever qualify for the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, according to Knopp. And he did it four times (1992, 2001, 2002 and 2005) by placing in the top 15 nationally in the steer wrestling event.
After retiring from professional rodeo, Lummus now works as a firefighter as well as dividing his time between his tree cutting business and raising cattle.
“Rodeo is like a family. … If you rodeo very long then you have family all over the country,” he says.
And his actual kin are involved in the sport, including his brother, Luke, and nephew, Will. Will Lummus ended up third in the world in steer wrestling at the National Finals Rodeo held in Las Vegas during 2018.
